Obama Travels To Fire Up Young Voters

By

Jonathan Weisman

Updated Sept. 28, 2010 11:46 p.m. ET

MADISON, Wis. –President Barack Obama swooped into this college town Tuesday evening, hoping to rekindle the youth vote that helped propel him to the White House for the benefit of Democrats in next month's mid-term elections.

ENLARGE

Barack Obama holds a discussion on the economy with neighborhood families in the backyard of a home in Albuquerque, N.M., Sept. 28.
Associated Press

The president greeted a throng of cheering students in a rally on the University of Wisconsin's Library Mall. "I need you fired up, I need you to stay fired up," he shouted to a crowd estimated by university police to be 26,500.

But the excitement in Madison notwithstanding, time may be running out for Democrats, who have the support of younger voters, but not their passion.

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Fifty-two percent of voters between 18 and 34 approve of the job the president is doing, the only age bracket where more people approve of his performance than disapprove, according to a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll. By a margin of 47% to 39%, that age group wants Democrats to maintain control of Congress after the November midterm elections.

But only 35% of those voters said they were very interested in the coming election. That compares with 59% of those between 35 and 49, 66% of those between 50 and 64 and 65% of 65-year-olds and above. Older voters tend to vote more in mid-term elections and this year appear to be voting more Republican.

Rep. Tammy Baldwin, the Democrat who represents Madison, looked out over the rally of several thousand students Tuesday night and sounded a note of optimism. "We've got our mojo working," she proclaimed to cheers. "Our job now is to light a fire under our friends and our supporters."

The "Moving America Forward" rally here coincided with Vice President Joe Biden's rally at Pennsylvania State University. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius made her pitch at the University of Maryland, while Democratic National Committee Chairman Tim Kaine spoke to college students in Delaware.

The president plans to appear Oct. 10 in Philadelphia, Oct. 17 in Ohio and Oct. 22 in Las Vegas.

Mr. Obama's political arm, Organizing for America, pulled out strategies honed during the 2008 campaign. Organizers of the Madison rally will be collecting e-mail addresses and pressing students to sign voting pledge cards that will be mailed back to them just before Election Day. They're also offering stage-side access to people who signed up for text-messaging alerts.

There will be "watch parties" at Iowa State University, in a state the president visits Wednesday, the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, where Mr. Obama was Tuesday morning, and campuses throughout the country.

But it's an uphill battle. Voters under 30 who are likely to turn out in November make up just 9% of all likely voters this year, half the percentage they represented in 2008, according to The Wall Street Journal/NBC polling.

The president is traveling across terrain that's also proving tough for other Democrats this election. Three-term Sen. Russ Feingold (D, Wis.) is trailing his Republican challenger, political newcomer Ron Johnson, by double digits in recent polls. Milwaukee's Democratic mayor, Tom Barrett, is struggling to stay close to Republican Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker in the state's gubernatorial race.

Republicans mocked the White House efforts to excite the Democratic base, characterizing it as browbeating core Democratic voters. The Republican National Committee e-mailed out the image of a skull-and-bones T-shirt reading, "the beatings will continue until morale improves."

And the White House's efforts may be revealing rifts among Democrats as much as repairing them. Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, characterized his own campaign efforts as "picking up the ball that this White House dropped when they refused to fight for the overwhelmingly popular public option (in health-care overhaul legislation), refused to break up the big banks, and demobilized Obama voters who expected this president to at least fight for big change."

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In Albuquerque, N.M., in the backyard of Andy and Etta Cavalier, the president spent a low-key hour taking questions about the economy. He addressed one woman's question about his religion.

Calling himself "a Christian by choice," Mr. Obama said "the precepts of Jesus Christ spoke to me in terms of the kind of life I wanted to lead, being my brothers' and sisters' keeper, treating others as they would treat me. ... Jesus Christ dying for my sins spoke to the humility we all have to have as human beings, that we're sinful and we're flawed and we make mistakes, and we achieve salvation through the grace of God."

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